Which is worse, the mindless ideas and words of a few racists, or the equally mindless overreaction by a large majority of others?

I am referring to the front page article about removing “Thunderbolt” from Founders Memorial Library. Also, an earlier article about “Thunderbolt” on Greek Row which called for copies of the paper to be “destroyed.” Personally, words like “remove” and “destroy” remind me of another word— censorship.

I fear a world where people like Jim Baker and Jerry Falwell can dictate how people should act. It used to be that people who disagreed with those two were “sinners.” Now, here at NIU, someone who stands up for free speech is considered “racist.”

It seems that today’s society is too paranoid and too passive. A good example of paranoid behavior was seen in the article in the Northern Star about officials in Chicago who want to change the city’s seal, at the cost of thousands of dollars, because it is racist. The reason they claim the seal is racist is because it has a cutty ship in the logo. Cutty ships, they claim, symbolize racism, since these ships were used to support slaves. This has to be the most paranoid and ridiculous excuse for logic I have ever heard. If the seal had whips and chains on it, the I could understand, but one has to stretch the imagination to see racism in the mere picture of a ship.

Yet many people have become so passive that they say, “Here, take my money and change the seal, and while you’re at it, please tell me what I can or cannot read.” To me, these attitudes are much more frightening than the threat of growing racism.